Harry Potter & the Price of Mercy
by: NecessaryEvil
Chapter Fourteen: Things Fall Apart
Disclaimer: They aint mine, foo.
A/N: Thanks to my reviewers.
D.L.:Oh no, you found me out. LOL. You know you got it wrong. And wutever happened to H/Hr forever mate?
Bon: What's so funnily literal?
Slimpun604: I'll try to keep up with the demand.
artico: Thanks for the reviews.
icedrake: Very original review, have a cookie.
Now on with the show.
At dinner Harry felt a hand rest on his shoulder in the middle of a story Cho was telling him about Care of Magical Creatures. Harry turned to see who it was and found himself looking into the solemn eyes of Professor Dumbledore. Harry knew right then that he wouldn't like the news, and he had a pretty good idea what the news was too, but he didn't let the thought of it get to him until he and Cho (Dumbledore having asked her there to be Harry's emotional support) had been sat down in Dumbledore's office and he heard the words that he had been dreading for almost a year and a half.
"Sirius Black has been caught,"
Harry was speechless. His face betrayed no emotion as he stared straight into Dumbledore's sympathy filled eyes. He felt Cho squeezing his hand to give him support, but he didn't feel any better for it. After several moments of silence Harry asked simply, "How?"
"He was on a mission trying to recruit a large group of old allies of ours from the last of Voldemort's grasps for power, he had gotten a great deal of them to agree to join the cause again, despite Fudge's insistence that there is no cause. He was on one of the last members, Himiko Hinano, she just happened to be an Auror, and was more loyal to Fudge than most of the others. She captured him and took him in. He's to be put in an American Ministry prison in a town called Roswell, as they already know that he can escape from Azkaban,"
Harry's face betrayed absolutely no emotion as he calmly asked, "Did you say Himiko?"
"Yes," Dumbledore replied, "Please do not hold this against her, she was just doing her job,"
"Of course," Harry replied, "May I go?"
"Yes," Dumbledore turned to Cho, "Would you please tell Harry's friends about this? I don't think he'll be up to it,"
"Of course," Cho nodded.
The two students got up and walked out of the office, slowly making their way back to the Great Hall. Harry however did not have an appetite as he stared lifelessly across the room at his best friend and his best friend's girlfriend talking animatedly, one word running through his mind, Himiko.
***
In Charms Harry and Ron were once again paired with Malfoy. Today they were supposed to work together to charm a book to speak its words out loud. They were taught the charm and immediately got to work on getting Standard Book of Spells: Grade Five to speak its words to them. To both Harry and Ron's shock Malfoy started up a semi-civilized conversation with them.
"So how are your lessons coming?" He asked
"Ok," Ron said unsuredly(is that a word?)
"Good," Malfoy responded to Ron's response.
There was a moment of awkward silence and then Malfoy said, "I'm sorry I give you two such a hard time,"
Even though the statement sounded a bit forced Ron still nearly fell out of his chair upon hearing it.
"Stop doing that would you!!" Ron yelled in frustration.
Harry watched in mild amusement, but he had other things on his mind than the odd behavior of his rivalish person.
***
The rest of the day passed pretty much without incident aside from the short lived uprising when Snape took one too many points from an on edge fifth year Gryffindor class. Harry made his way to dinner after classes and sat with Ron, Cho, and Sayuri at the Gryffindor table. Harry ate in silence for a long while, but finally looked up at Sayuri without any emotion on his face and said, "So I hear your mother is an Auror,"
Sayuri was slightly taken aback by this statement coming forth during her conversation with Ron about the basic formula of Canary Creams, but after a moment of staring she managed a, "Yeah,"
"I hear she brought in Sirius Black," Harry said, still not letting any emotion show on his face.
"Yeah, she was really proud of herself," Sayuri said breaking through her shock and starting to warm up to the conversation. She hadn't noticed, but she hadn't really talked to her boyfriend's friend before.
"How did she do it?" Harry was still holding back all signs of emotion, but he saw out of the corner of his eye that Ron's eyes were wide and he was mouthing, "Oh shit,"
"He was trying to trick her into thinking that Voldemort was back, to put some power behind the Death Eaters..."
"Voldemort is back," Harry said simply, as though he was saying that the sky was blue or school robes were black.
"Oh really? How do you know?" she said, raising an eyebrow. Harry barely recognized the fact that Ron was banging his own head against the table repeatedly.
"I saw him, last year," Harry stated flatly, "I must be going now, it's been nice talking to you,"
Harry got up and left leaving the gawking Sayuri, the extremely worried Cho, and the stupid feeling Ron behind to stare at his retreating form as he made his way out of the Great Hall and up to Gryffindor tower.
***
Harry couldn't sleep that night. He had this feeling that if he had to stay in the castle much longer he would suffocate, so he took out his invisibility cloak and the Marauder's Map and started his way out of the tower. He turned on the map to check if there were any teachers or Prefects nearby that might run into him and put up an alarm. No one was anywhere near him in the corridors, but a dot drew his eye to the library. The dot was labeled Hermione Granger, and it was unmistakably standing in the Restricted Section of the library. Harry however wasn't to be seen thinking too much about such things on this particular night, he made his way quickly to the main entrance and transformed into his Animagus form and took off running around the grounds.
***
The next morning Harry was up before the first rays of sunshine came up over the horizon. He ate breakfast quietly and alone and made his way to the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom just as most of the other students were filing in for their own breakfast. Harry got to the DADA corridor and was just about to go into the classroom when he heard familiar voices from a room across the hall. Harry walked to the door and carefully eased the door open a bit and looked inside.
There were two people in the room, Malfoy and a girl that was facing away from Harry. He couldn't tell what they were talking about and didn't much feel like listening in on it either. He was just about to turn around and leave the two when they leaned into each other and kissed. Harry didn't much care what Malfoy did with his girlfriend, so Harry went back to the DADA classroom's door and found it locked so he slid down and sat against the wall next to the door to wait for class to start. Soon Malfoy walked out of the classroom and spotted Harry. He froze, staring straight at him and a moment later when the girl walked out Harry saw why. The girl turned out to be Cecily Diggory. She too paused and looked at Harry.
Harry stared back at them for a couple of moments and then after the shock wore off he got up and walked up to Cecily and said, "Would you like a word?" she nodded and he followed her back into the classroom.
"What did you see?" she asked.
"Spotted the beginning of your snogging," Harry replied
"You won't tell anyone will you? We're still trying to figure out how to explain it to people," she somehow conveyed begging without lowering herself to actually doing it.
"Why don't you practice one me. What was that?" Harry asked.
"I think I love him. He's just so...he's one of the most decent guys I've met," Harry held back a snort, "He won't show it, but I can feel it,"
"Your brother wouldn't have approved," Harry observed off hand.
"I have no doubt that you're right. I told him last night,"
This gave Harry pause. He considered her statement for a moment and then asked, "You can contact the world of the dead,"
"Well usually it contacts me, but yeah,"
Harry nodded, "You might want to work on an edited version of that for the other people you're going to tell,"
"Thanks," Cecily said.
"Just tell him to stop trying to be extra nice to us, its freaking Ron out," Harry said this with a wry smile.
"Deal,"
Harry and Cecily made their way to class, which was now unlocked, but still rather empty except for Malfoy. Harry made his way to his seat next to him and silently sat down. After a few moments Malfoy opened his mouth to speak, but Harry spoke first, "If you hurt her I'll have you know that I will assume her late brother's roll and kill you,"
Malfoy nodded, "Understood,"
"And I hope that you have informed her of some your indiscretions, especially a certain comment you made last year," Harry had once again brought up his emotionless face.
Malfoy whispered something under his breath that Harry was satisfied sounded like, "Diggory was first," then he said more loudly, "She already knew,"
"Good,"
At this point the rest of the students came in and they stopped their conversation. The rest of class was spent practicing two on two dueling, which Harry and Malfoy were exceedingly good at, giving them plenty of time between duels to rest up since they finished within moments.
***
After Herbology in which they were studying sunflowers and lunch in which Harry spent his time in the kitchens talking to Dobby they had History of Magic. Professor Binns was back, but he refused to answer any questions about why he had been out.
Amazingly he finally managed to move past the subject of the Goblin Rebellion and started on the Dark Wizard Grindewald. Grindewald had apparently had an army of Dementors behind him during his reign in the late 1930's and early 1940's. He had been defeated by Dumbledore as Harry already knew from a Wizarding Card he had gotten in his first year. Before his defeat Grindewald had killed more that eighteen million wizards and muggles and destroyed more than a dozen wizarding cities, of which there are now none.
Harry listened to this and found himself being a little bit glad that he was facing Voldemort's return instead of Grindewald's, because Grindewald sounded a whole lot less pleasant.
***
At midnight Gryffindor had Astronomy and they were studying an alignment of planets that happened only once in a millennia and was currently happening that week. When Professor Sinistra asked if anyone could supply any information that she had left out two hands went up, Ron's and Hermione's. Professor Sinistra was so surprised that Ron had volunteered that she selected him just out of curiosity about just what he might know.
Ron cleared his throat before beginning, "The alignment between Mars, Pluto, and the constellation Leo appears to occur throughout this entire week, but they are currently not in alignment and will not be until tomorrow. It is said that the week before the alignment is suppose to be filled with odd events all leading up to a series of tragedies occurring on the actual day of the alignment,"
"Yes Mr.Weasely, that is what they say, but this is Astronomy not Divination. The information about when the actual alignment takes place would have sufficed,"
Ron look embarrassedly at the class and when he saw the bewildered look on Harry's face he mouthed, "Sayuri's favorite class,"
***
Harry woke the next morning with a feeling of dread. He felt that he needed to go see Professor Dumbledore right away. He got dressed and half ran down to the stone Gargoyle that was the entrance to the Headmaster's office. When he got there he ran into Professor McGonnagal who was also on her way to see Professor Dumbledore. She eyed Harry suspiciously so he said, "I have to ask the Headmaster something important,"
She nodded curtly and told the gargoyle the password and waited while it jumped aside. The pair made their way up to the office and found it empty. Dumbledore was gone. Harry turned inquisitively to his head of house and asked, "Did he tell you he was going somewhere?"
Seeing the look of worry on McGonnagal's face was enough to tell him that she was not informed of the Headmaster's departure.
***
Harry walked into the clearing that he had sensed Will Finn's power signature in. Will was sitting in the middle looking up at the stars. After a few moments of silence he asked, "So have you decided yet?"
"Yes," Harry said simply.
"Well?" Will said raising an eyebrow in expectance.
"She said she's willing if I'm willing,"
"Are you?"
"I'll start monday night," Harry said turning and walking away.
Will smiled and shook his head, "Guess thats a yes,"
***
Sayuri walked quietly down the corridor towards her common room. She still had a grin plastered on her face from a random complement that Ron had given her before saying goodnight. She was halfway down a particularly long corridor when she felt eyes on her back. She turned around to see if anyone was there, but she didn't see anyone. She scrutinized the corridor for a couple of moments before she was satisfied that it had only been her imagination playing tricks on her.
She turned around to head back to her common room and nearly ran into a student. She smiled when she saw who it was, "What are you doing down here?" The smile faded when she looked into the students face and saw a cold look in the eyes. She began to run, but her attacker tripped her and she fell on her back. Her attacker bore down on her and Sayuri just whimpered, "Why?"
A maniacal grin spread across her attacker's face. The hand of the attacker came to rest on her chest and there was a very bright flash of pure energy. When the flash cleared up Sayuri lay there on the ground without a spark of life left in her body. Himiko Sayuri was dead.
***
A/N: If you have a problem with this chapter keep in mind that I wrote it after midnight and was going off of a plan I wrote weeks ago. Read and Review.